Sir Ian Botham has come out fighting for the Brexit cause. He says that in cricket, he’s learned to succeed by standing proud and facing the opposition with confidence, and he believes that’s what Britain should do in the world. In his long cricketing career he’s had close contacts with many Commonwealth countries, and says it’s “insane” that we’re not free to make our own trade deals with them.

Spot on, Sir Ian. Maybe that headline should not read “Bats for Brexit”, but “Bats for Britain”.

Crabb: “Brexit could cause economic rupture”

Ever heard of Stephen Crabb? They say he’s the Work and Pensions Secretary. Finding new words for tired scare stories, he says that Brexit “could cause economic rupture comparable to the banking crisis”.And of course he also threatens “job losses”. Somehow I feel that the public are more likely to recognise Sir Ian Botham – and to trust him – than they are Mr. Crabb.

Two comments. First, Crabb should be worrying about the job losses happening now, as we speak, while we’re in the EU, across energy-intensive businesses in Europe and the UK. Think Port Talbot. He should be worrying about Antonio Tajani’s “Industrial Massacre in Europe”. He should be worrying about plant closures, and investment moving to more rational jurisdictions. He should be recognising that these disasters are directly caused by the EU’s perverse and destructive policies.

Secondly, people like Crabb carry a huge weight of responsibility. We all acknowledge that Brexit will cause some temporary volatility in the markets. By constantly predicting Armageddon, the Remain Campaign will inevitably make matters worse. Some prophecies tend to be self-fulfilling

Writing in the Telegraph on this very subject, Janet Daley remarks that the Remain Camp has squandered its early advantage. She argues that the opposite of a future that is uncertain is one that permits no freedom at all. One could go further – remaining in the EU is arguably a great deal more uncertain than leaving, given the host of existential crises massing against the European Project. The truth is that in or out, the future is uncertain. Would you rather face that uncertainty having some control of your destiny – or having none?

Boris accuses Obama of hypocrisy

Boris Johnson has used some rather undiplomatic language with regard to President Obama’s forthcoming visit to the UK, and the expectation that he will seek to promote the Remain Campaign, saying “it is plainly hypocritical for America to urge us to sacrifice control — of our laws, our sovereignty, our money and our democracy — when they would not dream of ever doing the same”. Indeed.

Meantime Nigel Farage called on Obama to “butt out”. He said “President Obama should butt out. This is an unwelcome intervention from the most anti-British American President there has ever been. Mercifully, he won’t be in office for much longer.”

Tremors from Greece: next eruption due

The Greek crisis has been out of the headlines for some time (I mean the Greek €uro crisis, of course, not the Greek migrant crisis: for as Shakespeare put it, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”). But now there are further rumblings, as the IMF under Christine Lagarde, having been criticised for giving too much support to relatively wealthy Europe, and not enough to poor countries, seeks to tip-toe away from the latest bail-out. No one could wish the Greeks to suffer more than they have done already. Nonetheless, a full-blown Greek €uro crisis around mid-June would focus minds in the UK ahead of the referendum. The Greek volcano will certainly erupt. The only question is when.

MEPs want Turkish as an official EU language

David Cameron is gung-ho for Turkey’s accession to the EU. I’ve always felt that this was unlikely to happen in the short term, and not very likely at all. Yet here are MEPs in Strasbourg voting to make Turkish an official language of the European parliament — with the enormous additional administrative expense of hiring Turkish translators and producing all the institutions’ documents in Turkish – as well as all the other languages. I’ve lost count but I think it’s twenty-two.

Do we want to “share sovereignty” with 75 million Turkish people who are very poor, largely non-European and from a very different cultural background? I think not.

Billingsgate for Brexit

The FT reports that traders in Billingsgate fish market are solidly for Brexit. Given the damage that EU membership has dome to the UK’s fishing industry, perhaps not surprising. We lost our fish so long ago that perhaps we don’t keep it in mind. But recovering our fisheries will be a huge benefit of Brexit.

John Whittingdale’s agony continues

The Daily Mail carries new revelations in the John Whittingdale scandal. He is said to have had a two-year relationship with a former Page Three girl, Stephanie Hudson, and to have shown her Cabinet Papers. This could prove more damaging than the previous stories.

Wills and Kate in India

Nothing to do with Brexit, but I mention it simply because it is so heart-warming. Most of the papers carry a dramatic photograph of Wills and Kate sitting very close together in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, on the very bench where Princess Diana was photographed alone all those years ago. If only Diana could see that photograph.

Earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador

There have been serious earthquakes with considerable loss of life in Japan, where the search for survivors is intensifying in Kyushu, and in Ecuador, where CNN reports 77 dead and hundreds injured. Tsunami warnings have been issued for Ecuador and neighbouring countries.

This is the kind of circumstance where UKIP argues that the UK should be prepared to deliver timely and effective humanitarian assistance. It contrasts with the current government’s approach of setting an enormous but arbitrary budget for Foreign Aid and then looking for ways to spend it, often on countries that should be perfectly able to fend for themselves.

Given the coincidence of large-scale seismic events occurring at almost the same time on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, I wonder how long it will be before some climate zealot claims they are caused by Global Warming.

Who is Stephen Crab, ask any man in the street and the answer will be DUNNO. Crabb studied Politics at the University of Bristol and graduated in 1995, so not exactly training in International finance, but more importantly the workings of the European Union which his boss Cameron said was not working and never did fix.
Just lets say he is watching his back and repeating the Government line. Don’t these people have the brains to read up on the failures of the EU, but then Ignorance is bliss.

I do not think Elliott and Cummings have made a very good job of informing and presenting the facts of EU membership. Cameron is getting away with the lie – ‘I want to stay in this reformed European Union’ Where is it, has anyone found it?

Christopher Booker has an interesting article – Why global governance is making the EU irrelevant. The point he makes is that the EU on trading and regulations is an unnecessary middle man, strip that out and you are left with an overbearing political union.

The Adam Smith Institute expands on this with – Stuck in the middle with the EU, by Roland Smith.
The UK does not need the EU to perform the wholesaler role for the majority of Single Market regulation that now falls within the ambit of global organisations and through Brexit, can also shorten the chain of accountability between UK government and global market governance.

Outside the EU, Britain would have a much louder ‘say’ on regulation, standards and rules that affected it—our voice is often muffled, distorted, and ignored when heard via the EU, which is increasingly becoming just another player in a multilateral world. The UK can be a powerful player in its own right.

When we leave the EU they cannot take away our trading rights bestowed in International Agreements, the EU don’t own them.

Your in the sea, in danger of drowning, after your yacht overturned and sank ! You see another motor yacht, but although it’s big, it too is damaged and low in the sea. You notice, in the other direction, but at about the same distance, a heavy duty inflatable with a full cover over it, and designed to save lives. WHICH ONE DO YOU MAKE FOR ? With a heavy sea running, you make for the heavy duty inflatable, designed to save lives, of course ! As you swim to the inflatable you hear the shouts from the big, damaged motor yacht of ” No. Over here, we are too big to sink ! ”
A couple of days later, at home, you read of two motor yachts, with all on board lost, except for four people, safely found by Air Sea Rescue. You thank God that you did not listen to those on the big, damaged motor yacht. All lost with Captain Cameron, and Engineer Corbyn, with all their friends from the Club that they all belonged to. You receive a letter from the inflatable manufacturer, with the offer of a sales appointment, along with the other three that were also rescued, and realise each one is from a different Nation of the United Kingdom. They all lived happy ever after. Now children, off to sleep, God Bless and see you in the morning !
TRYING THIS APPROACH FOR THE AVERAGE STAY-IN PERSON.

Because of the sudden opening of the floodgates in respect of John Whittingdale (a brexiteer now out of favour with no. 10), I tend to agree with another blogger who considered that we should not discount the possibility that Francis Urquart is the initiator.

Nice to learn Ian Botham wants us to leave the EU.
As for the EU being economic it should have the letters un in front of it as right from Britain joining the Common Market every treaty signed by Conservatives then Labour have been detrimental to our Country.

Single European Treaty changed EEC to EC. Introduced European control of Lawmaking, Foreign Policy, Employment and Regional Development. Britain was fined in 1988 John Major organized the Merchant Shipping Act to safeguard our Fishing from Spanish Fishermen. EU Court of Justice overruled it and Britain was fined £100m and given to Spanish Fishermen as Compensation. British Taxpayers paid up. Exchange Mechanism to prepare for Single Currency caused the worst recession in 60 years since the second world war.100,000 businesses went bankrupt. Unemployment doubled from 1.5 to 3 million. Britain lost gold and dollar reserves of £68 billion. Maastricht Treaty changed EC to EU. which had been planned all along, without disclosure to the British people. All UK citizens, including The Queen became citizens of the EU. EU Court of Justice can now override all UK laws. Set up common defence force or Army. Introduced the single currency in accordance with the 1957 Treaty of Rome and Regionalisation, whereby Britain is governed directly by Brussels. (All under Conservatives)

Treaty of Amsterdam was signed established EU control over further areas of British law and established Europol, the EU state security service which,like the KGB in Soviet Union, is about the law, and cannot be sued.

Treaty of Nice 39 vetoes on areas of British life was given up. Britain’s laws, including Habeas Corpus, to be replaced by European Law under Corpus Juris, (guilty until proven innocent).

European Constitution signed in Rome makes the EU into a single country, the “United States of Europe” with all the trappings of a single state. The countries ratifying it will cease to be independent sovereign states. Instead they will be split up in to regions of this new country.
(All under Labour).

BOTHAM FOR MAYOR! (next time) – I liked everything he said. His case on immigration was well expressed as discrimination against the rest of the world rather than against immigration per se. The point is to remove the PRIVILEGE that EU citizens enjoy over immigration rights to the UK.
[btw this time I’m voting UKIP in London Mayoral elections.]

Obama – that’ll be the chap who sent Winston’s bust back to Britain I think…. loads of mileage for UK Independence there.

I love Billingsgate. Even more now. Great to see the fish issue surfacing at last – much better case than the NHS. Glad to see Janet Daley seems to agree :
” The Leave camp should not be claiming that the money we would save by coming out could simply be poured into the NHS, thereby solving all its problems, any more than the Remain camp should be claiming that Brexit would be the sole cause of its collapse. Neither of these things is true and I doubt that anyone interested enough to vote will be influenced by them.” As I said before, trivialising the campaign with pragmatic opportunistic spin will only lose votes. In or out the NHS needs a good seeing to.

Far better to talk about the big vision of Conquest’s “Oceanic Association” of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand or Dan Hannan’s Anglosphere as the positive democratic and representative alternative basis for world order with a moral compass. Doubtless many democratic freedom-loving [probably English-speaking] countries would join up.

I love Janet Daley’s point that the best answer to uncertainty is the removal of freedom. Let UK Independence help Europeans escape from the clutches of the tyrannical, corrupt EU. Appeal to all those Europeans who also hate the EU. Need a big divide between our feelings for Europe and Europeans on the one hand and their Brussels jailers on the other.